Tully: Why Barack Obama, Greg Ballard agree on preschool

Mayor Greg Ballard is doing the right thing by taking a campaign-style approach, complete with new radio ads financed by his campaign committee, to boost his lagging proposal to invest city money in high-quality preschool.

The first commercial hit the airwaves Thursday and made clear that the mayor’s plan is in deep trouble. Few politicians spend campaign cash freely in a non-election year, but Ballard’s team clearly understands that the preschool plan hasn’t gained much traction at this point.

That said, the Republican mayor’s voice pouring out of radio speakers on a few stations isn’t likely to alter the actions of many members of the Democratic City-County Council majority. It’s also not likely to sway the influential Democratic pundits and politicos who have criticized the mayor’s plan in recent weeks, somehow forgetting decades of Democratic dreams centered on the idea of spending more money on early learning.

So if Ballard’s words on the radio aren’t likely to convince more local Democrats to join his preschool effort, and if he for unexplained reasons won’t pitch the plan one-on-one to rank-and-file councilors, I wondered this week who might be able to bring more council Democrats on board.

Perhaps Barack Obama?

“We know this works,” the president said in 2013, while announcing a plan to increase federal spending on preschool. “So let’s do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.”

Or how about U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts? She is arguably more popular than Obama with hard-core Democrats these days, and in a 2013 press release she argued that, “When we invest in early childhood education, we’re investing in our nation’s future.”

Why is that, senator? Because, she said, “Early childhood education helps children grow and learn from the very beginning, and helps make sure all our kids have a fair shot to succeed in school.”

It’s been quite a spectacle to watch council Democrats treat the mayor’s preschool proposal as if he were suggesting a statue of Ronald Reagan in the lobby of the City-County Building. After all, Democrats going back decades have pursued this same public-policy goal — and many local Democrats actually campaigned on the idea just three years ago. But now, with the exception of a few, those same Democrats seem content to let this opportunity pass.

It makes you wonder what they would have said to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, the liberal lion, who called investments in preschool “critical to keeping parents working and children in safe and productive early learning environments.” Or to former Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is now a Democratic star in the U.S. Senate. He was quoted saying that, “If we don’t do something, then we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and entrench more Americans in the quicksand of poverty.”

The message has been echoed for years by teachers unions, civil rights activists and many other leading Democratic voices. It makes it hard to understand why the debate here in Indianapolis has been so difficult. Sure, a robust discussion over financing is fair and responsible. But too many local Democrats have put at the forefront of this debate their criticisms of the details and their gripes with the mayor, when the goal should be about two things only: Fine-tuning the plan and finding a way to get this done.

Fortunately, City-County Council Vice President John Barth, a Democrat, is trying to guide his largely skeptical caucus through this debate. He plans to unveil a modified preschool plan early next week, with more details than the mayor has offered and different funding sources. Let’s hope he and council President Maggie Lewis can push other Democrats toward the preschool plan.

If they can’t, perhaps their party’s most likely 2016 presidential nominee can.

“One of the best investments we can make as a nation is to give our kids the ingredients they need to develop in the first five years of life,” Hillary Clinton wrote in a 2013 op-ed, adding that high-quality preschool is crucial, “so that when those kids get to school, they’re able to compete (and) they are more able to pursue their own dreams.”

The question now, of course, is whether those dreams can take precedence over political divisions.